


we could have been

by sooj



Category: f(x)
Genre: Slice of Life, i also don't imagine sehun in this way but whatever, i got lazy and never wrote in my fav ship, idk none of these are my main krystal ships, it's just for a writing prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-03
Updated: 2017-03-03
Packaged: 2018-09-28 01:41:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10062794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sooj/pseuds/sooj
Summary: character development prompt: describe your character's first love. (alternatively, the ones that left an impact)





	

**Author's Note:**

>   * no beta
>   * lapslock
>   * shorter than i wish for it to be
> 


 

_**THE FIRST** _

 

the first one is mean. he teases her with _you’re short, grow up,_ and _look how small you are, shorty._ park jinyoung’s only several inches taller, and in a confined world of fellow first-graders, being short shouldn’t be so big of a tease, but she inevitably finds herself always yelling back. (she can’t say stupid or else she’ll get in trouble with the teacher, so all she can wail back is _nuh-uh, stop it!_ ) sometimes she’s mean back, but she ends up being pretty cautious after that one time she accidentally made his ear bleed.

 

she doesn’t think of him much after she switches elementary schools for the next grade: her new house isn’t within the school’s blocks — hasn’t been since the move after kindergarten, but her parents had registered late, and there had been no room for her the first year — so a new environment in a familiar suburb greets her for second grade. she sees him on her way from the bathroom walking out of her neighboring classroom, feigning ignorance until he calls out her name in delighted surprise. _you go here now, too? are you following me?_ her voice sounds squeaky and rushed and full of the same childish tease. she turns her head from his gap-toothed boy grin to slip back into the safety of her classroom.

 

she doesn’t even want to think about the embarrassment of third grade, when she handed him a valentine’s day card. the rule for valentine’s day in the public school system is simple: it’s required to give a card to everyone if you want to participate… but she ends up writing _i really like you_ in ballpoint pen, which she tries to desperately cross out in thick, black sharpie. it doesn’t work. the indentations from her heavy, elementary writing stay embossed under the haste sharpie scribbles. jinyoung’s friend, im jaebeom, doesn’t let her live it down for a complete week. jinyoung’s both smug and awkward about it. she should have just given him a new card.

 

his family leaves for arizona in the middle of fourth grade, and she doesn’t hear from or about him until junior high hits. by the time she hears from him again, she’s deep in eighth grade blues from pulling herself away from crush number three. she has long conversations with him through aol instant messaging (ah, the days of aim and the _krnaznboii_ screen names), talking about old times as if their time as elementary kids hasn’t only been a few years ago. maybe it’s the familiarity of an old friend, but she finds herself actually (horribly) flirting back.

 

he’s in town for a couple of weeks for winter vacation, and her parents are off on a rare anniversary trip (grandma’s asleep on the guest bed). she stays up until two in the morning iming him, eagerly (and anxiously) watching the tell-tale _…is typing…_ disappear when he says he’s walking around outside with jaebeom. _i think we’re near your house, wanna chill?_ they sit outside her house on the curb in the dark, and despite this, she still has to crane her head up to match his gaze. (arizona must be good for growth spurts, and he’s just so tall compared to her still-growing frame.) his jacket is wrapped around her frame, her constant _shhh_ s breaking through the crisp air every time the other two forget to lower their voices. jinyoung’s knee brushes against the side of hers, and she rests her thigh on his without a word. soojung doesn’t look at his face, afraid to see his smiling eyes already on her. he makes her insides flutter.

 

she eventually drifts away from the first one. arizona’s too far.

 

_**THE THIRD** _

 

the third one she meets in her eighth grade orchestra class. kang seungyoon’s a fellow cello, and even though he’s played for a couple of years longer than she has (it’s only her third month when the academic year starts), she sits a chair above him. he’s outgoing, he’s clumsy, he rushes his playing, he’s always cracking a joke during down time, he’s always smiling and saying hi. he’s a dork. he makes her want to play maplestory again to have more common points to talk about. he makes the butterflies inside her stomach multiply, and she doesn’t know exactly why.

 

they text a lot, they im each other a lot, they tag each other on their myspace bulletin surveys a lot, they’re periodically in each other’s top eight. it’s the first time in her life she stays up until two or four in the morning on a fairly regular basis to talk to a guy. sometimes, she sets an alarm to wake up in the middle of the night, pretending to play cool. _what the hell, you’re up too? lol!_ the fatigue the next day is seemingly worth it to have deep (teenage angst) conversations with someone she likes.

 

he ends up getting a girlfriend, a pretty little thing a year below them. she gets booted off seungyoon’s top eight to make room for the scrub (local slang for a seventh grader). oh well, it’s not like he was hers to begin with. the news still stings like a bitch.

 

it’s not so much that seungyoon’s relatively easy to get over — they do stay friends, which is horrible for soojung’s fragile, pubescent mental health in the beginning — but jinyoung conveniently intervenes for that moment during winter vacation, and it’s so easy to be distracted from a painful unrequited crush when another boy’s showing interest. of course, the thought of actually pursuing anything with jinyoung is out of the question because long distance relationships aren’t for eighth graders, right? out of the question.

 

she quickly moves on from jinyoung to jung ilhoon, a mutual in her myspace friends. she’s never met the mutual before, but his myspace profile song — rappy mcrapperson’s _im a gangster_ , also known as the best rap song on the planet — opens up a plethora of icebreakers, and it ends with a cute inside joke (<_>, also known as steve). but the universe is clearly working against her love life, she swears to god, because despite thinking ilhoon’s flirting with her, he asks out one of her friends. maybe she’s just bad at flirting. maybe she isn’t exactly over seungyoon. she keeps tossing glances his way until the middle of freshman year, when she finally moves on to another crush (number four). number four ends up — wait for it — with him getting a girlfriend a year below them during sophomore year.

 

man, what luck. jung soojung doesn’t luck out on boys at all during the latter half of the 2000s. maybe she should blame seungyoon.

 

_**THE FIFTH** _

 

the fifth one is her elementary schoolmate. oh sehun moved schools at the end of fourth grade, so she never really talked to him or had any relations to him other than having a number of mutuals. but then again, in a suburb full of koreans and a not-really-conventional school social system, everyone knew each other despite the size of the suburb. but they probably would have never talked outside of knowing each other’s names if they hadn’t ended up being in the same fifth period during sophomore year.

 

(what a coincidence - the fifth crush is formed in her fifth period.)

 

it starts off simple, innocent, a bet on who could be the better pokémon trainer in the time it takes for the bus to get to the field trip destination. she doesn’t sit next to him on the way there, only brief taunts and brow raises towards each other across the several rows between them. during the free self-roam time of the field trip, he makes jokes that he loves her, that they’re best friends, that they’re married, _duh_. her friends tease her, joking back that he should be holding her hand then because isn’t that what couples should do? (he does. she remembers because it’s a blistering socal summer, and she has tagged pictures on facebook of their shadows on the desert ground with linked hands. it’s probably still tagged somewhere.)

 

they sit together on the ride back, everyone else around them conked out as they continue on with the bet. (she wins. he’s stuck in the petalburg woods by the time she’s well on her way into the gym of rustboro city. she makes sure to rub it in his face. he seems content either way, and her heart flutters for a brief moment. she turns away from his grin.) they switch out their gameboy xp’s for his ipod, and it’s the first time in a long time she hears a weezer song. (he fucking loves weezer and jason mraz.)

 

(every jason mraz song now reminds her of oh sehun.)

 

 _yeah, she’s my girlfriend._ their inside joke of being married on facebook ends up with people outside their respective circles questioning the legitimacy of their platonic friendship, and he always replies with an _of course, duh, she’s my wife_. in retrospect, this is highly embarrassing and cringeworthy and ridiculous and outlandish, but she admits it makes her feel special in the moment. she doesn’t even know if she likes him or not — they’ve only started talking a few weeks ago.

 

the act goes on longer than necessary until she brings up the courage to confront the elephant in the room: _why do you tell people we’re dating? do you like me or something or is this a joke?_ (it’s sent as a text because jung soojung isn’t bold enough during this time of her life to actually pick up the phone and call, let alone meet up with him.) _yeah, i like you. i didn’t want to ask over a text or this early, but… wanna go out for real?_ she still doesn’t know if she likes him or the attention she’s getting, but she ends up saying _yes_ because jung soojung in her teenage years also doesn’t know how to say no.

 

sehun is her first real boyfriend. there’d been one back in sixth grade that lasted for two weeks because of her inability to get out of peer pressure — the guy had been an annoying, spoiled crybaby, but he did buy her pricey snacks, so that had been a thing. her first real boyfriend, and she has absolutely no idea what’s acceptable, what’s weird, what might make him not like her anymore. she wants him to like her for as long as possible, trauma lingering from witnessing her earlier crushes liking girls who aren’t her. but she’s never thought actually getting the attention she wants would be so burdensome. why can’t she act the same as before? why can’t she look him in the eye anymore? why can’t she accept the date suggestions? why does she make up excuses for each time he wants to hang out? it’s only oh sehun. why is she so nervous?

 

the weird thing ends up being that despite her pushes, he still pulls. the breakup is weak and horrid (another text because the first call goes to voicemail, and her heart’s pounding because she can’t possibly relay the bad news, she’s going to be seem like such a Bitch, she just feels so bad she keeps rejecting his attempts, this isn’t what a relationship is supposed to be like, right?), and despite his cool _let’s still be friends though, i’m fine with that_ , she hears from his friends that he’s pretty broken over it.

 

the other weird thing is that soojung starts to realize she actually likes sehun a couple of months later, likes him enough to know she feels regret for breaking it off in the first place. and as with pretty much all her other crushes, he gets a girlfriend. a girlfriend! a cute one! subjectively cuter than her! objectively very similar with her — the same music taste, humor chord, height! the only difference is the new girl is fine with meeting up and being casual during dates, an extrovert countering her introvert. soojung’s the one that dumps him, but she’s the one with the lingering green monster looming over her shoulder.

 

staying friends is difficult by this point, just another tick in the metaphorical counting wall of jung soojung’s lack-of-love life, because he and his new girlfriend are a cute couple. really cute. he texts her about the girl, talks about dates they go on, briefly mentions their first kiss. it feels a little faux pas. the green little devil inside her burns angrily, nestling itself in its new home, deep within her chest as it cradles her heart with claws tugging at the strings. _bro, that’s so cute??_ she lies through her teeth for her sake.

 

the green monster cackles a little too giddily when he texts to say the two are no longer an item. _what, why? didn’t you really like her?_ it’s hard to feel sympathetic. a month later, he confesses soojung had partly been the reason. _for what?_ soojung confused him. the new girl was so nice, so good, so cute. _confusing you? the hell did i do lol bro make some sense?_ (she knows what he’s talking about.) so good, so cute, but he found himself coming back to talk to her, found himself thinking of her when he held hands with the other girl, found himself thinking of her when he hugged the other girl.

 

she doesn’t act upon this, and neither does he, so sehun eventually accepts the situation and moves on — actually moves on. she doesn’t until her senior year.

 

the fifth one still comes to mind at times.


End file.
